eisenhower

War No More : A Book Review

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The Chalice of  War

Recent events with respect to our so-called enemies abroad, including Donald Trump’s

  • fruitless, impeachable knee-jerk bombing of Syria earlier this year, an act whose legal justifications rival the effectiveness and stated objectives in vacuousness,
  • inflammatory posturing toward Iran in an incredibly dangerous perpetuation of Washington’s Iranian foreign policy over the past thirty years, and
  • saber-rattling against North Korea as tensions escalate, virtually ignoring long proposed nuclear freeze proposals articulated by Noam Chomsky, proposals requiring the impossible act of American military retreat in that piece of the world,

underscore the precarious position in which we find ourselves in our 200,000 year run on this planet.  In the midst of these tumultuous times, there exists a specter looming over virtually all mainstream discussion, so far out of mind as to conjure moronic climate change denialism, differing in that most Americans, whether convinced of the overwhelming scientific evidence or not, are at least aware of the debate.  The bias should seem clear, as Trump’s illegal attack on Syria should indicate : articulate opinion virtually fell into lockstep admiration of Trump, for example,  the New York Times remarked,

in launching a military strike
just 77 days into his
administration, President
Trump has the opportunity, but
hardly a guarantee, to change
the perception of disarray in
his administration.

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept pointed out this and many other instances of elite media reversal on Trump the instant bombs begin falling.  There exists a chalice of war, and Americans have been drinking deeply of it since the second world war; the mindset is pervasive, infiltrating our holidays, movies, video games, and most state-sanctioned celebrations of patriotism, whatever that actually happens to be.  Believe it or not, it hasn’t always been this way.  And there are a few voices rising above the rest to remind us.

David Swanson : Today’s Eugene Debs

I first encountered David Swanson’s works in the early days of George W. Bush’s warring administration. I had learned in college about the myriad military misadventures of American presidents, including

  • Harry S Truman’s illegal war of aggression in Korea, events out of which the brutal North Korean regime emerged,
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower’s acts of aggression in Guatemala to combat nationalism,
  • John F. Kennedy’s raving mad stance toward Cuba (to be discussed in an upcoming article in The Spanish Pearl series), and aggressive war against South Vietnam,
  • Lyndon Johnson’s lying about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to promote war in Vietnam and support of Israel’s illegal invasion of Lebanon,
  • Richard M. Nixon’s aggressive wars in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, as well as the overthrow of Salvator Allende in Chile on September 11, 1973, the first so-called “9/11”,
  • James E. Carter’s support of Indonesian dictator Suharto in committing genocide against the East Timorese,
  • Ronald M. Reagan’s invasions of Grenada (a tiny defenseless island nation), bombing of Libya, drug runs in Columbia, war-making in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and propping up of Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein as a shield against Soviet influence in Iran,
  • George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama and escalation of the Gulf War,
  • William J. Clinton’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 despite warnings of heavy casualties among fleeing refugees,
  • George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter of which Chomsky labels the supreme crime of the 21st century, and
  • Barack Obama’s international drone assassination campaign, killing perhaps thousands of civilians in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Libya,

and the list could include crimes committed before 1945, though we’d require another article.  Suffice it to say that George Washington’s extermination of the Iroquois, Andrew Jackson’s mass murder of natives, destruction of native food sources by Ulysses S Grant, and the invasion and occupation of the northern half of Mexico by James K. Polk are but a few instances in the legacy of bloodlust the Europeans bore and continue to bear in conquering the western hemisphere.  We’ve mentioned the Spanish American War more recently as a light case study, and with this large body of historical evidence, it seems pretty clear another approach is warranted, especially when considered with respect to the forecast of virtually every credible intelligence agency in the world : violence generates rather than diminishes the threat of what we like to think of as terrorism.

David Swanson has long argued that not only is there an alternative to war, there is no alternative to peace.  A modern day Eugene Debs, this philosopher and activist has traveled the nation and the world to promote an ideology and dialog badly lacking in elite support.  Of interest in this article is his 2013 book War No More : The Case for Abolition.  In it, Swanson adeptly confronts many of the persistent myths, including the inevitability of perpetual war, the humanitarian war, the defensive war, the stabilizing war, and the like.  He also explains, quite effectively, the post-war shift of American culture in his earlier work War Is A Lie.

A Culture Drunk on War

Long before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Americans often were only very reluctantly conscripted into battle to fight for elite interests, as discussed earlier in the case of the Spanish American War.  We know now that desertion and reluctance to fire weapons at other human beings resulted in colossal ammunition waste in most of the wars through the twentieth century.  The psychology is simple, Swanson explains :

[m]ost human or primate
or mammalian conflicts
within a species involve
threats and bluffs and
restraint.

War is unnatural, he argues, citing further evidence that the grooves left in early human skeletal remains are bite marks from the large land dwelling predators we’ve since extinguished rather than battle scars from tribal skirmishes.  This in fact echoes earlier commentary on the most native violence experienced by Columbus in his expedition : light sparring with sticks and the like, only very rarely resulting in serious injury.  The conquistadors’ violence wrought upon the natives was something else entirely.

In any case, Swanson remarks that since the second world war, the military has become increasingly efficient in indoctrinating soldiers to kill.  A parallel public relations program has glorified war in film, print, and now video games, often with heavy consultation from weapon manufacturers and military personnel.  One need only look at the preponderance of blockbuster films these days to experience the influence.  Further still, military recruiters routinely lie and glorify the military way of life, enticing the poor with a phony carrot rather than the stick of the draft in earlier wars.  As before, the poor fight and die while elites shield themselves from the draft, such as

None of this should come as a surprise, as only a small percentage of human beings can truly stomach killing others.  It’s large enough that in our population we routinely hear of such violence, but, as Swanson often suggests with rhetorically surgical precision, imagine if the news stations spent as much time on nonviolence as they do violence.

Swanson helped me begin to identify the tremendous propaganda toward state violence after I read his comprehensive 2010 book War is a Lie; I had noticed in recent years, something he systematically demonstrates in his works, that a large fraction of cinema previews included a vast array of military tools, soldiers, and their deployment to the “battlefield,” a term Swanson very cleverly disabuses as an archaicism.  He points out that virtually every popular video game on the market features extreme amounts of gun violence and murder; though I am indeed a great fan of the game Skyrim, virtually anyone paying attention to the gameplay mechanics should notice that both men and mer would face imminent extinction with the pervasive, unremitting violence everywhere.  Skyrim isn’t alone, as the most popular video games these days exalt wholesale violence, enabling a broad range of sociopathic choices.  If a player kills virtually all citizens of the realm, who would grow the food, tend the livestock, write the books, etc.?  More broadly, one can note that almost all the holidays we observe in America are tied to violent acts, including, ironically, Easter, Thanksgiving, and the whole of Armistice Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and the like.  Our national anthem celebrates the violence of the Revolutionary War as a boon for freedom, despite the fact that life for 95% of colonists and virtually all natives, slaves, and women changed or worsened under the new management.

In any case, Swanson points out that dissidents are labeled derisively “anti-American” unless they blindly support ongoing wars under the mantra “support the troops,” even after elite sectors themselves disavow wars as unwinnable, strategic blunders.  Chomsky correctly points out that America is the only non-totalitarian state where such a notion of “anti-state” exists; Germans opposing Angela Merkel would never be described idiotically as “anti-German”.

Moreover, Swanson strongly argues the malignant effects of war on troops, rendering the catechismic “support our troops” phrase all the more ridiculous : we must continue the killing to honor the dead, lest we savage their memory.  I’ve witnessed dear friends and family thank troops publicly for their service, despite our military being the basis for human sacrifice : eighteen year-old boys must go die in some foreign land so we can ward off the undefinable, largely imaginary evil forces of tyranny, much like ancient cultures sacrificed humans to appease the gods of harvest.

I’m familiar with many mental health professionals who can confirm the extremely harmful effect of war service on human beings; post-traumatic stress disorder, coupled with loss of limbs, eyes, hearing, and the like mar not just our own soldiers, the only people elite sectors depict as “people,” but wreck nation after nation, killing millions and driving millions more into exile, prostitution, and violence.

The drone strikes themselves have raised a new generation of terrorists; case in point is Farea al-Muslimi, a young Yemeni student who spread good tidings about America back to his village until it was attacked by drones to kill an unarmed man accused of terrorism.  Instantly, a village hates the United States, despite the ease of placing the suspect in custody rather than destroying parts of their village and killing civilians.  This story isn’t unique, and it takes genius not to recognize how these policies further imperil both innocents and ourselves.

Even the non-partisan Brookings Institute recently warned that Trump may have the means, militarily or otherwise, (but not necessarily the mind) to finally

think seriously about
ending North Korea’s
nuclear ambitions by
creating a new order
in Northeast Asia.

Consider this in light of Chomsky’s aforementioned comments from a Democracy Now interview in April :

no matter what attack it
is, even a nuclear attack,
would unleash massive
artillery bombardment of
Seoul, which is the biggest
city in South Korea, right
near the border, which
would wipe it out, including
plenty of American troops.
That doesn’t—I mean, I’m no
technical expert, but as far
as I can—as I read and can
see, there’s no defense
against that.

In other words, stray too far into that dark place in which Kim Jung Un feels no escape, and the human cost could be tremendous.  Is there an alternative?  One need only read history, a sample of which I’ve written here, to know that America typically preaches peace and diplomacy, yet we maintain self-proclaimed nuclear first strike power, occupy over 800 military bases in 80 foreign countries as reported by The Nation in 2015, and have committed the supreme crime of aggressive war innumerable times just since the second world war, generally arguing publicly the desire to sue for peace, to supplicate the needy in humanitarian crises, or, earlier on, simply saying nothing.

Freedom isn’t Free, But War Won’t Buy It

It turns out that war fails to improve our freedom, as we’ve argued repeatedly here echoing the writings of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, and Amy Goodman : dedicated resistance and a cohesive, powerful labor movement have so far proved to be sufficient, if not essential to the civility and freedom we enjoy in the modern era.  Swanson argues, alongside them, that war historically always has the opposite effect, reducing freedom while fomenting unrest and division.  One need only look at the various wars to discover that many dissenters have gone to jail, including Swanson’s historical doppelganger Eugene Debs; Debs encouraged antiwar speech during World War I.  War resisters during the Revolutionary War faced violence, confiscation of property, murder, and expulsion to Canada.

During World War II, the government imprisoned Japanese and German Americans.  My grandparents worked at Camp Howze, a POW camp near my hometown of Gainesville, Texas.  Woodrow Wilson argued during World War I that “disloyal” dissidents

had sacrificed their
right to civil liberties.

We can certainly recall suppression of resistance to Vietnam, and the immediate passage of the fascist PATRIOT Act upon the second 9/11.  The point is, not only does freedom not flourish under war, Swanson argues that it cannot flourish.  Learning the former must precede the latter, and Swanson articulates a very strong argument for both.  So what of the good wars?

Apologists for War

Most rational Americans have come to believe that war is primarily a tool for control.  During the Vietnam and Korean Wars, Americans were conscripted to fight for what the Pentagon Papers revealed to be control of the “tin, oil, and rubber“, among other economic objectives. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), mentioned in earlier posts, was a late twentieth century neo-conservative think tank whose manifesto stumps for conquering Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Iran in order to secure American interests in the region.  Swanson raises the intriguing coincidences of both Iraqi and Libyan leadership electing to deny the dollar preeminence in oil purchases, Hussein opting for the euro and Gaddafi the gold dinar, both immediately preceding our violent intervention; certainly intelligence agencies in America and elsewhere knew very well Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction remaining.  Lost in this is that Saddam offered to exile himself, handing Iraq over to NATO provided he could abscond with one billion dollars; considering the trillion dollars the war has cost, wouldn’t that have made more sense?

Swanson reminds us of Eisenhower’s admonishment of the rise of the military industrial complex, a largely unaccountable cadre of business and military interests hell-bent on self-sustainment in the face of an increasingly peaceful world.  Ironically, as Swanson points out, war doesn’t make market sense, as it would be more efficient to spend the money on renewable energy, infrastructure, education, health, and the like, even aside from the pesky problem of human life.

In any case, PNAC’s manifesto laments that we must

fight and decisively
win multiple, simultaneous
major-theater wars

to preserve the so-called “Pax Americana”, conceding that the American public no longer will tolerate protracted wars.  Despite years of carefully composed propaganda and rhetoric, the political elites have yet to convince the public that war with Iran is necessary.  Trump’s wild approach may prove fatal in this instance, as he, like power-mad elites preceding him, fumes when “enemy” nations comply with sanctions.  Nonetheless this reluctance speaks to the increased civility of society.

On the other hand, Americans continue to support war mythology with the firm belief that at least in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, we defeated tyranny, slavery, and fascism, respectively.  We’ve already addressed the farce that is the first of the three above.  The Civil War was easily preventable through diplomatic means, though the times were different.  Rather obviously, however, the union states simply could have attempted to purchase the slaves, perhaps to the tune of one billion dollars, as opposed to spending three billion to destroy countless cities and leave a buyer cultural resentment still harming us today (in an upcoming article, I’ll try to address the notion of white privilege and the legacy of slavery.)  If the north had really wanted a peaceful settlement, it could have permitted secession and encouraged slaves to flee into the free states.  The dirty secret is that the north no more wanted freed slaves than did the south.  In any case, Swanson debunks these wars with ease, leaving us with the last ace of the warmonger : the second world war.

Swanson Takes Down the “Good War”

For brevity, I’ll leave most of Swanson’s arguments about the so-called “good war” to the reader.  But suffice it to say that America was already in the war long before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, actively cutting off supply lines and providing weapons and equipment to the European allies.  Truman famously quipped on the Senate floor that we should

help the Russians when
the Germans are winning
and the Germans when
the Russians are
winning[... s]o each
may kill off as many
as possible of the other.

Are these the words of a man pursuing peace and freedom?

Swanson further argues means of preventing Hitler’s rise through a less ridiculous settlement than the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of the first world war, deescalation of his militarism through discussion and diplomacy, and rescue of the Jewish refugees initially expelled from Hitler’s caustic, totalitarian empire.  Instead, we, along with Britain and France, isolated Germany, refused to aid the refugees, and in our case sold weapons to Britain and France while strengthening the Pacific navy, cutting off Japanese supplies in Manchuria, and conducting military exercises off the coast of Japan.  Americans actually held a rather favorable view of Hitler, as anti-Semitism was rampant among elite sectors here; both Joseph Kennedy and Prescott Bush, fathers of presidents-to-be, either held business dealings with or openly supported the Nazis even after America officially entered the war.  Fanta became Coca-Cola’s means of remaining in Germany, and Henry Ford placed a portrait of Hitler on his desk.  In fact, when Confessions of a Nazi Spy, a thriller starring Edward G. Robinson, premiered in Milwaukee, pro-Nazis burned the theater to the ground; even the far right Senators of the day wished to investigate Robinson and the film as Jewish propaganda angling for American entry into the war.

Enshrining the Holocaust only became important to the American political class with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1967, an unsolicited but helpful gesture in advancing American hegemony.  Though there’s much to add, suffice to say the one good war killed over seventy million people, or equivalently twenty percent of our current population.  Was that really necessary?  We touched on the atomic bombs dropped in 1945 at the conclusion of the war.  Are we better off for creating them?

A Great Read

Like all of David Swanson’s books and articles I’ve read, he powerfully confronts the folly of pro-war propaganda and the arguments, lofty or low-brow, for the perpetuation of war.  He eloquently rearranges the pieces of the puzzle to expose the idiocy of the arguments advanced by the state in support of violence, such as this gem with respect to our government offering protection to people facing chemical warfare :

[k]illing people to
prevent their being
killed with the wrong
kind of weapons is a
policy that must come
out of some sickness
[... c]all it Pre-
Traumatic Stress 
Disorder.

I highly recommend this and his other works, as he, like the great activists before him, tells the truth.  His words are more prescient than ever before as we confront the problems of the twenty-first century.

 

The Spanish Pearl Part Five : Eisenhower and the Push-Pull of Intelligence

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We’re spending a good deal of time in the pivotal space of Cuba’s revolution of 1959 and the early days of Castro with good reason : the shallow villainy of Castro in Americana has persisted for the many decades spanning his autocratic rule, and though we shouldn’t condone violence and immorality by anyone, let alone a dictator, it’s crucial to understanding the American role in said history, if one is to divine ethical policy decisions today with respect to Cuba, or any other foreign body.

Previously, we discussed the turmoil in Cuba generated by the corrupt Batista dictatorship and American dominance and negligent nonchalance in Cuban politics and economics.  Despite internal concerns about the red inclinations of Castro, members within the intelligence community, notably Alfred Cox, head of one of the paramilitary divisions of the State Department, suggested

A practical way to protect United
States interests in this matter would
be to make secret contact with Castro,
assure him of the United States sympathy
with some of his objectives, and
to offer him support. The individual
chosen to make the contact should be
of such background that[ ]it is clear
that he speaks with the authority of
the United States Government.
Obviously, the support must be given
covertly so as not to endanger United
States relations with Batista. The most
effective means of help to Castro would
be arms and ammunition. Air dropping of
this equipment might be dangerous from
the security aspect. Allowing a shipload
of equipment manned by a Cuban
crew to evade our Coast Guard would
probably be a better method. The most
secure means of help would be giving
the money to Castro, who could then
purchase his own arms. A combination
of arms and money would probably be
best[,]

according to official historical record of the Bay of Pigs invasion released in 1998 under the Freedom of Information Act.  That same document details how the Eisenhower administration attempted in December 1958 to curry favor among Cubans opposed to both Castro and Batista, hoping to appease the growing anti-Batista sentiment while curtailing pro-Castro forces.

These same documents indicate Washington monitored Cuba carefully, expecting Castro’s government to collapse quickly.   Four months after the January 1959 overthrow of Batista, Castro visited the United States to meet with press clubs, American citizens, and any willing government officials; intelligence experts expected the trip to differentiate success from failure for Castro, though some experts refused to admit a possible thawing of Castro’s anti-Americanism boosting his popularity in Latin America :

[i]t would be unwise to assume from the
minor indications to date that Fidel has
undergone a serious change of heart as a
result of his visit to the United States.

Aside from the previously discussed misrepresentation by Nixon and snub by Eisenhower, Castro’s visit was a public relations success.  Castro returned to turmoil at home, his anti-communist statements in America (requested by Nixon) fomenting difficulties as communist and anti-communist members of the Cuban government vied for prominence.  Castro’s government instituted early reforms, included

  • mass school construction,
  • laws empowering women and providing greater equality for African Cubans,
  • land reforms providing allotments and coops for poorer Cubans,
  • programs to improve literacy and education availability,

among others.  Far from a perfect picture, Castro organized the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), agencies of local informants aimed at isolating “counter-revolutionaries,” apparently including homosexuals.

Eisenhower’s administration remained involved in Castro’s government, dispatching diplomats and carefully weighing options, as the internal documents mentioned above demonstrate.  Some elements, notably in a Related Mission Directive (RMD) dated December 1959, admonished temperance, suggesting

[f]or the moment, CIA operations should
be carried out on the assumption that the
revolutionary government is basically non-Communist,
with legitimate reform goals
that deserve US respect and support. Covert
operations should support overt efforts
to arrive at a rapprochement with the present
government and to eliminate the conditions
described above without resorting
to forceful means.

Further, the aforementioned report writes,

[a]s 1959 drew to a close, a final Special National
Intelligence Estimate, "The Situation in the Caribbean
through 1960," indicated that Castro was in to stay,
despite internal difficulties. The SNIE saw no serious
threat to Castro's continued rule, and it pointed out
that if there was direct US intervention, "Most Cubans
including the military, would react violently [emphasis mine]."

Along similar lines, General C.P. Cabell, among others, maintained Castro’s non-communist position, though he conceded that communists could overcome Castro with some effort.

Another program underway in Eisenhower’s administration was overthrow : J.C. King, chief of the western hemisphere (WH) division of the CIA, wrote in a December 11, 1959 memorandum :

[t]he overthrow of Castro within
one year, and his replacement by a junta friendly to
the United States which will call for elections 6
months after assumption of office,

an obvious reversal of course.  Determining where Washington’s passivity ended and sudden hysteria began naively can be a challenge, as public statements of the day spoke of communist containment and democratic empowerment.  Perhaps instructive is a diplomatic missive to Washington from Havana dated May 26, 1959 in which American officials bared the ugly truth :

These demonstrations obviously welcome,
but possibly most significant aspect is
demonstration once again, enormous power
Castro, who with few words made anti-Communism
popular position. By same
token he could reverse trend at any time,
and skeptics speculating that current
stand is sop intended to make it more
difficult for u.s. interests to protest
effectively against stringent agrarian
reform law [emphasis mine].

That is to say, Castro very well could intend genuine reform, not be a communist, and represent a boon for Cubans, but his charisma and capacity to shift public opinion represented a perhaps intolerable threat to American foreign policy : the unabated, free access to plunder resources at the expense of those living there.

King continues with a strategy of propaganda no doubt capable of winning even Nazi strategists over :

1. Clandestine radio attacks on Cuba,
from liberal Caribbean countries.
2. Intrusion operations against Castro's
TV and radio, to be mounted from within Cuba.
3. Formation of pro-US opposition groups
to establish by force a controlled area
within Cuba.

Finally, he suggests outright assassination, tempered by a hand-written edit by CIA director Allen Dulles :

Thorough consideration be given to the
elimination [removal from Cuba] of Fidel Castro. None of those
close to Fidel, such as his brother Raul
or his companion Che Guevarra [sic] \ have
the same mesmeric appeal to the masses.
Many informed people believe that the
disappearance of Fidel would greatly accelerate
the fall of the present government.

Most noteworthy in all of this is a clear lack of desire to work with a popular figure capable of smoothing relations : why not give peace a chance?  Batista was despised by his own people, and so unpopular globally that John F. Kennedy pegged Eisenhower’s support of him as complicity in war crimes during his 1960 bid for the presidency against Vice President Nixon :

Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years...
and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police
state—destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to
his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled
Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support
of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly
praised Batista—hailed him as a staunch ally and a good
friend—at a time when Batista was murdering thousands,
destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing
hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people,
and we failed to press for free elections.

Even suggesting a “working with” exposes the faulty framework from which we often discuss foreign policy : why should Cubans work with us to support mostly American companies?  What threat did Castro really represent in 1959? Even if one is imbecilic enough to believe Soviets represented a threat here, by our own intelligence, there was no connection.  Yet within a year, Eisenhower’s intelligence wonks were steeling for a fight.  The rub is simple : Castro represented defiance demonstrated in various other Latin American countries against American business interests, just as the memo described above suggests.  We’ll examine Kennedy’s take next time.

 

The Spanish Pearl Part Four : Batista, Castro, Eisenhower, and the Laying off of Cuba

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We concluded previously with a discussion of mounting economic tensions in Cuba as American protectionism further imperiled an already gluttonous over-production of cane sugar, damaging demand and thus widening the income gap among Cubans.   A fascinating position paper by Jose Alvarez, professor at the department of food and resource economics, describes in greater detail the intricate economic intertwining between Cuba and the United States during the nearly six decades of “tender patriarchal democracy.”  Mostly uniform is the American dominance in the sugar production in Cuba and the restriction to that single export, with a few exceptions of seasonal fruits and vegetables.  The larger theme is that of the following, one any of us working in corporate America can easily understand : imagine forcible restriction by management to a particular subset of your skills, and imagine further that management eventually deems said subset obsolete.  What happens to you?  Generalizing the analogy to a country requires painful recognition of grave immorality and craven avarice : Blue Marble Citizen records Cuba’s population as ranging from five to seven million over the 1950s.  Alvarez’s paper describes a rural landscape containing thousands of farms and a distribution of land types, though as one would expect cane sugar dominated in era of American patriarchy, characterized uniquely by majority consumption of Cuba’s sugar by America and majority imports into Cuba coming from America.

It’s worth understanding this relationship as clearly as possible : imagine if your survival depends crucially on the whim of exactly one mostly irreplaceable person who easily can and does stymie any peaceful or gradual motions toward your own autonomy, and that master/slave relationship persists over decades.  Suppose further that the master, whether for legitimate reasons or not, no longer has any use for you, but in your present form you cannot survive without his relinquishment of domination.  What happens next?  Common sense dictates a process.

Fulgencio Batista protested to President Dwight Eisenhower that a further curtailing of American sugar imports could decimate the Cuban economy, as described in research by Ann Marie Holmes.  According to Robert Freeman Smith in The United States and Cuba: Business and Diplomacy, 1917-1960, the Cooley Bill mentioned earlier and other protectionist policies by 1959 reduced America’s imports of sugar to fifty percent of Cuba’s exports, down from ninety-six percent just three years earlier.  Compounding the problem was the economic outcome of imperialism, nicely summarized by analyst Natasha Geiling of Smithsonian Magazine:

U.S. financial interests included 90 percent of Cuban mines,
80 percent of its public utilities, 50 percent of its railways,
40 percent of its sugar production and
25 percent of its bank deposits—some $1 billion in total[.]

Essentially, Batista’s failure in persuading Washington to lighten the trade restrictions and furnish agriculturists to cultivate a crop diversification program, together with his overwhelming corruption and embedding with organized crime (documented in T.J. English’s How the Mob Owned Cuba — and Then Lost It to the Revolution reviewed in the Washington Post) crippled his support among most Cubans, as they stood nothing to gain from American imperialism and a criminal dictatorship defined by avaricious excesses, nicely symbolized by a golden telephone.

Meanwhile the Castro brothers had regrouped in Mexico with revolutionary Ernesto (Che) Guevara, in exile after the CIA-backed coup in 1954 which overthrew Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, the democratically-elected president of Guatemala.  Arbenz’s only crime was to nationalize farmlands and plantations, infuriating the United Fruit Company, an American corporation unwilling to tolerate Guatemalans taking back their own land and crops.  Not too coincidentally, John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen were the United States Secretary of State and the head of the CIA, respectively, and they happened to be well-compensated board members for United Fruit.  We could investigate that corporation’s highly controversial history in greater detail, though we can leave that to the reader; instructive is Big Fruit, reviewed in the New York Times.

The three enlarged the 26th of July movement into a force capable of overthrowing Batista.  Eisenhower, reportedly obsessive over the spread of Soviet communism, feared that Batista’s ouster, almost a certainty as his popularity in Cuba crumbled, would render the island somehow open to Soviet domination, despite little to no evidence.  Castro initially portrayed himself as no friend to communism, as the Hoy, the official newspaper of the Cuban communist party, described his earlier attack on the Moncada Barracks as

a putschist attempt, a desperate form of
adventurism, typical of petty bourgeois circles lacking in principle
and implicated in gangsterism[.]

Nonetheless the Eisenhower administration feverishly sought a suitable replacement for Batista, despite his willingness to renege on his earlier flirtation with communism, discussed in Julia E. Sweig’s Inside the Cuban Revolution, to gain favor from Washington; Castro was not a viable alternative from the perspective of agency heads, as Eisenhower recalls in his memoirs that Allen Dulles believed communists had already infiltrated the 26th of July movement as early as 1958, despite communist disdain for Castro described above.  Unhelpful in teasing out the history is that Richard Nixon, then Vice President to Eisenhower, later lied persistently about circulating an internal memorandum condemnatory of Castro, likely in chest-thumping anti-soviet fury, to which we’ll return.

Castro led a successful overthrow of Batista on New Years’ Day 1959, the day after Batista fled to the Dominican Republic.  For a brief time, Washington was somewhat ambivalent about Castro’s new government, described in Luxenberg’s analysis.  Castro installed a temporary president, Manuel Urrutia Lleó, and in a goodwill meeting with the American Society of Newspaper Editors in the United States, Castro said in April 1959 :

I know the world thinks of us, we are Communists, and of course
I have said very clear that we are not Communists; very clear.

Nixon hosted Castro for a three hour meeting after Eisenhower apparently snubbed him to play golf.  The memorandum detailing the meeting, described by Alex Luxenberg in an investigation of Eisenhower’s possible contributions to Castro’s eventual pact with Moscow, was actually rather sympathetic :

[m]y own appraisal of him as a man is quite mixed. The one
fact we can be sure of is that he has those indefinable qualities
which make him a leader of men. Whatever we may think of
him he is going to be a great factor in the development of
Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally.
He seems to be sincere; he is either incredibly naive about
Communism or under Communist discipline - my guess is
the former.... But because he has the power to lead...we have
no choice but at least to try to orient him in the right
direction[.]

Castro returned to Cuba with plans of agrarian reform aimed for moving the economy away from near exclusive sugar production (a population can’t survive on just sugar).  Expropriating farmlands obviously would require U.S. corporations to relinquish sugar plantations : American business leaders protested to Washington, heralding another refrain of a tired tragedy of American hegemony in Latin America briefly mentioned above.  Specifically, despite virtually zero evidence of Soviet influence in the 1959 coup, Washington once again cried “communism,” the public relations bogeyman served to justify crushing the genuine threat Castro represented : nationalism and independence in satellite states.  This “threat”, evidenced in Castro’s staunch anti-Americanism, along with Eisenhower’s tepid response to Castro’s outreach, chilled relations in 1959.  Anti-communist and communist forces in the July 26 movement sparred, compelling Urrutia to resign; Castro, seeking unity, more warmly received communists in his midst.

In the remaining parts of this series, we’ll discuss Castro’s alliance with Moscow and the near unremitting hostility to follow, but first a few words on Luxenberg’s analysis.   He argues ultimately that Eisenhower bears minimal responsibility for Cuba’s enmeshment with the Soviets, suggesting Castro pursued this relationship himself for his own reasons, perhaps in galvanizing his power; his thinking is that Latin America suffers some neglect in U.S. foreign policy, tacitly suggesting that a firmer hand in Cuba was justified, resigned to the obvious ineffectiveness of sanctions, something we’ll discuss more in depth later.  Still, Luxenberg writes,

[n]evertheless, it is not enough to
suggest that just because an individual is not a member of the
Communist Party that such a person cannot be an enemy of the United
States. If Castro's ties to the Communists are a matter of debate,
those of the Ayatollah Khomeini are not. Yet no one would question
the virulent anti-Americanism of the latter[,]

and he quotes Allen Dulles as having written,

thousands of the ablest Cubans, including leaders,
businessmen and the military, who worked hard to put Castro in
and were risking their lives and futures to do so, did not suspect
that they were installing a Communist regime[,]

taken together to indicate an amnestic conclusion that Castro pursued Soviet relations and communism perhaps out of mere anti-Americanism and cartoonish villainy, again overlooking the substantial role even a little American effort in reversing the damage six decades of economic and political imperialism could have played in better relations, to say nothing of the indiscussible topics of economic, political, and democratic empowerment of Cuba for Cubans.

The Spanish Pearl Part Three : Sugary Sweet Good Neighbor Policy But Hardly ‘Golden Years’

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Continuing with our discussion of Cuba, American dominance throughout the island was palpable through the 1920s.  Nonetheless, trade deficits and the stock market crash of 1929 left the United States grasping for protectionism in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, ending economic reciprocity as America’s business elites struggled to tread water amidst a wrecked, failed pseudo-laissez faire economic policy.   The Cuban military leaders, along with Sumner Welles, American diplomat dispatched to Havana to negotiate a settlement, ultimately convinced Machado to resign and flee.  Within days, a militant student group, led by Fulgencio Batista, a son of a laborer and an army official, overthrew Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, Welles’ official replacement for Machado, placing in power a university professor by the name of Ramón Grau San Martín.  San Martín publicly opposed the Platt amendment and supported reforms enacted during sporadic rule in the early 1930s.  Though Welles in certain respects attempted outreach to both San Martín and Batista, Washington’s reluctance to recognize San Martín because of the risks of reforms (a common dilemma America faces when choosing between human rights and market control), pressure to protect American property and interests, Batista’s commitment to resisting communism, and a power struggle with Batista led Welles’ replacement, Jefferson Caffery, to side with Batista.  San Martín resigned, replaced by more militant elements in the government sympathetic to Batista.

In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt and Cuba formally dissolved said amendment in the Treaty of Relations as part of the Good Neighbor Policy, an ideological and diplomatic campaign aimed at unifying the western hemisphere and diminishing violent American hegemony.  Prominent in the policy were public relations designed to acquaint Americans with a flavor of Latin life through the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA).  The U.S. vowed not to interfere with Cuba’s sovereignty nor favor any political force, though the letter and the spirit differ, as is generally the case.  Nonetheless, the Good Neighbor Policy was successful partly in softening relations in the western hemisphere; course reversal coincided with the conclusion of the second world war.

Batista became president of Cuba in 1936, and though he supported some worker reforms and extended outreach to communists, American leaders generally considered him reliable.  Under the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, the U.S. provided arms to Cuba in exchange for military alliance in anticipation of joining the war in Europe and opened training grounds in Cuba.

Relations with the U.S. became increasingly difficult during San Martín’s resurgence in the late 1940s and early 1950s; as early as December 1945, San Martín was negotiating with America to relinquish control Cuba’s military bases, according to the American diplomatic papers.  Though the U.S. returned a few bases and airfields to Cuba, it continued a military presence in the island with ships, manpower, and other equipment, to say nothing of the base Guantanamo Bay.  Colonel Camilo Gonzalez Chavez of the Cuban Air Corps proposed to American officials for the U.S. to open airspace to Cuban training exercises and ease travel requirements for Cuban soldiers, according to Ann Katie Holmes.   That is, Cuba naturally assumed that mutual trust between the two nations should permit Cuban military games over Kansas corn fields if the U.S. Air Force could play in Cuba airspace; it turns out that American friendship is often one-sided.

American leadership certainly noticed that our economic intervention in Cuba concentrated wealth among the American investors and their upper-crust Cuban surrogates while sandbagging cost-of-living increases essential to supporting the population at large.  With the beginning of the Cold War, American propaganda found a new, post-war enemy in Stalinism, and though Cuba’s proximity to the United States seemed an insurmountable obstacle to Soviet influence in the hemisphere, Cuban workers parties and human rights movements were receptive to anti-Americanism.  From their perspective, the U.S. continued to occupy, ferret away resources, and control the Cuban sugar economy through many means, including restriction of diversification.  That is to say, if Cuba’s crop output is highly diversified, the country can better negotiate with buyers internationally.  Constraining crop output to just a handful of varieties ensures better deals for the buyers, principally the United States.  It’s easier to imagine that if a store sells only lightbulbs, it likely can’t get your attention if you’re buying dish rags that day.  Further, many alive remembered the Platt amendment, American support of Machado, and American failure to recognize the San Martín government.  Moreover, Cuba had a communist party since at least the 1920s, with an ideology increasingly attractive to Cuban peasants either underpaid or superfluous in the hemisphere’s economy.

Carlos Prío Socarrás became president of Cuba in 1948; a friend to American interests, he soon proffered a new treaty promoting American businesses in exchange for technology sharing.  Cuban resistance, as mentioned earlier, stymied his first iteration, compelling him to reduce scope to sugar and currency stability.  Prío, like San Martín before him, joined the effete as Cuban opinion diminished around their inability to reduce violence or corruption, setting the stage for a coup.  Nonetheless, though these were hardly “golden years,” to conjure historian Charles Ameringer,  the years marked by their leadership were an improvement over two decades preceding enactment of FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy, to say nothing of the days of Spanish imperialism.

In 1952, Batista seized power in an American-backed coup supported by wealthy Cubans after a seemingly unsuccessful run for president.  Resistance movements appeared here and there, one lead by Prío, another by a nationalist by the name of Fidel Castro.  Prío operated a resistance inside the U.S. while Castro plotted to overthrow Batista from within.  A failed coup in 1953 at Moncada Barracks left several rebels dead with Castro and his brother Raul imprisoned.

In 1955, Chairman Harold Cooley of the Agricultural Committee in the House of Representatives presented his eponymous protectionist bill tightening the noose around Cuba’s economic throat : if passed, it would guarantee that once annual imports of sugar reached 8.3 million tons, Cuba could supply no more than 25.6% of it.  That is, despite American restrictions against crop diversification in Cuba as discussed above, Congressional leadership intended to protect American domestic sugar mills at the heavy expense to Cuban mills.  The sugar market was already grappling with excess supply, so Batista expressed deep concern to President Eisenhower about America’s seeming willingness to betray decades of economic interdependence.

Meanwhile, Castro and his brother received pardons, and fleeing to Mexico, sought to establish a 26th of July movement, named for the day of their attempted coup.  The years leading to their success will be the topic of discussion in a following article.